Greene, still feeling the effects of a hit to the head Monday at Detroit, stayed overnight in St. Louis before returning Friday morning to Los Angeles. He’s scheduled to undergo tests to determine why he has been feeling wobbly and will be reevaluated next week.

Mitchell, who suffered an unspecified lower-body injury during the Kings’ 6-4 loss at St. Louis on Thursday, saw a doctor in Nashville on Friday afternoon and a club spokesman said the veteran defenseman is week-to-week. He will stay with the team and get treatment while the team finishes this five-game trip.

And lest we forget … forward Brad Richardson, back in L.A. with what’s believed to be a concussion, has been riding the bike and skated in El Segundo on Friday. His status is day-to-day.

The fact is, Washington has issues, just like every team in the salary-capped NHL. They rely on young relatively unproven goaltenders and lack a galvanizing veteran leader. Even the player they picked up to add experience to a raw defence corps, Scott Hannan, is quiet by nature.

Accordingly, it will be up to general manager George McPhee to figure out if such a commodity is available between now and the NHL trading deadline (probably not). If McPhee can’t find it, then the leadership must come from within - and specifically in the person of Ovechkin, who has been a follow-me type of leader since assuming the captaincy from Chris Clark, as opposed to someone who can rally the troops the way Chicago’s Jonathan Toews can.

Ovechkin’s primary failing in last year’s playoff was going all lone-wolf on his team when they fell behind against the Montreal Canadiens and couldn’t solve the goaltending of Jaroslav Halak. This year, it looks as if Ovechkin has made a concentrated effort to be more of a team player on the ice.

For a short time, when he and fellow Russian Alexander Semin were playing together on a line, it was Ovechkin’s playmaking that sent Semin off on a goal-scoring spree. It looks as if Ovechkin is caught in between right now, thinking too much about his own role on the team and what actually goes into being the captain of an NHL team.

The current CBA is set to expire following next season and at this point, there’s only speculation at to what will come with the new one. Will we see another salary rollback? Will guaranteed contracts disappear? Will revenue sharing be completely revamped?

The uncertainty makes negotiations a challenge and currently there are some high-profile players it could affect including Steven Stamkos, Alexander Semin and Drew Doughty.

“I lose sleep over it, honestly,” said agent Mark Gandler, who represents Semin. “This is, to me, much more serious than people realize. I see the way deals are being signed - we don’t even know what the landscape is going to be a year and a half from now. We have no clue, what’s going to happen, we’re both operating in the dark.”

With no Lightning game until tomorrow and goaltending woes/Nabokov talk/spin-o-rama-gate/Vinny’s return/and so on and so forth already covered, barring anything unforeseen, I didn’t think I’d be writing today.

By sticking to today’s crop of players, however, Richards didn’t cover it all and, though I don’t have the kind of time to rummage through the annals of NHL history that this endeavor truly deserves, by sticking to the two teams I’ve paid the most attention to over the years, the Lightning and the New York Islanders, plenty of additional precious material gets a little run here from yours truly.

My criteria are simple: Names that are either inherently awesome, bring back a noteworthy personal memory or spark some derivation of everyone’s favorite question these days (which I believe the kids abbreviate as “WTF?”) and are in no particular order – cause that’s just hard – other than alphabetical (according to height). Also, prospects are excluded, meaning each player has to have played at least one regular season game for either club (ruining the day for you Luca Cunti fans out there!)

So here we go, with an early Christmas present from me to you, JJ’s 50 Great Names that have played for the Isles and/or Bolts:

Watching Kesler’s highlight package from his hat-trick performance in Wednesday’s win was like watching a season-ending video tribute, documenting his plays of the year. It was a brilliant performance. It was momentous enough to leave people thinking back to four years ago — one last time — when a 22-year-old checker, with 12 goals in 110 games, shook up the NHL by signing a $1.9 million offer sheet with Philadelphia.

What happened to that guy?

The answer is revealed in comments he made in September 2006, when then-GM Dave Nonis, after playing hardball in negotiations, was backed into a corner, and forced to match Clarke’s contract. Kesler was unapologetic and unabashed when he got the money under heavy criticism.

“If a team wants to pay me that, I think it’s well deserved,” he said then. “I do work hard and I’m just going to keep working harder.”

Adam, with Zach Parise becoming a restricted free agent after the season, will a team try and sign him to an offer sheet? Let’s say Toronto throws an offer at him that the Devils can’t match. Would the Leafs have to surrender two first round picks, a second and a third as compensation?

If Parise makes it to the summer without a contract extension from the Devils, there will be a bunch of teams fighting to tender him an offer sheet. The compensation you’re mentioning would be surrendered for a player who signed for between $6.1- and $7.7-million. If a team has to offer more than that to land Parise as an RFA, the compensation jumps to four first round draft picks. For clubs owing four draft selections in the same round as compensation, they must have those picks available in the next five drafts. Clubs also cannot acquire picks to then use as compensation.

That said, having watched Lou Lamoriello work his magic on the league for as long as I have, I’d bet you anything Parise never makes it to the market. Some might say Lamoriello would be wrapping himself and the franchise even tighter in a salary cap straightjacket by signing Parise, but I think he’d demote half the team to the American League to get under the cap and keep one of the best two-way players in the game.

If I’m wrong and Parise is allowed to move on, the Devils’ woeful offense this season will look like the 1980s-era Oilers in comparison. But I’m not wrong. He’s staying.

According to N.H.L. deputy commissioner Bill Daly, the league’s system of sharing revenue with lower-profile teams in large markets will likely change in the next collective bargaining agreement. In the C.B.A. that was negotiated in 2005, it was decided that teams in markets with television households of 2.5 million or more would not qualify for revenue sharing. As a result, the Islanders, New Jersey Devils and Anaheim Ducks are on the outside looking in.